


From the Grave

by Lady_in_Red



Series: Endgame [3]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Battle, Between the Scenes, Episode Related, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Internal Monologue, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-06 03:30:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18842731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_in_Red/pseuds/Lady_in_Red
Summary: Between the scenes of The Bells, Jaime makes his way to the Red Keep.After The Bells, the survivors look for the Lannister twins and make a startling discovery.Fix-it for 8.05 and 8.06.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title and lyrics from "From the Grave" by James Arthur, _For the Throne_

_I never meant to leave you there, a crown of roses in your hair_   
_Along with everything you ever feared_   
_And every step I see your face, and even though I'm miles away_   
_Just close your eyes, and you can feel me here_ _  
_

  
“You’re a damned fool.”

“So everyone tells me.” Certainly not the first time he’s heard how foolish or stupid he is. Not even the first time today. Jaime squints ahead of them, trying not to stumble and fall on the uneven ground. For an old man, Ser Davos walks very quickly, and Jaime is still exhausted and saddle sore.

Davos glances back over his shoulder and slows his pace. “You left Winterfell.”

“As did you. I suppose we’re both fools.” Jaime has lived in King’s Landing for two decades, and it’s disconcerting to realize he doesn’t know where he is. Nothing around him looks familiar. Where are the tall trees? The shady roadway leading out from the gates? Cersei must have had some of the trees cleared to build her scorpions.

Ser Davos clucks in irritation. “I didn’t leave a good woman to crawl back to this nightmare.”

Jaime sighs. That he can’t refute. “I didn’t deserve her.”

Davos turns abruptly off the path they were following around the edge of the allied army’s camp. It would not do to be caught now. They move quickly through a stand of trees and around a shallow pond. The trees thin out ahead of them, a brackish scent fills the air, and suddenly Jaime knows where they are, not far from the Water Gate.

“She said that, did she?” Davos glances back. “I thought not. We’re all unworthy, Lannister. Some more than others. Your lady knight chose you anyway.”

Stannis’s Hand is the last man Jaime ever expected to champion Brienne. “You do know she killed your king?”

Davos stops so suddenly Jaime almost runs into him. “And he burned his own daughter as a sacrifice. I have no quarrel with Lady Brienne.”

“Ser Brienne.” The correction comes automatically. He shouldn’t even speak her name. Her absence is like a newly-missing tooth. He can pretend nothing has changed, but any reminder brings the pain back anew.

“Aye. So why am I helping you get to that one?” Davos points up at the castle soaring high above them. The city walls between them bristle with scorpions.

_You poor fool. She’ll be the end of you._ Olenna Tyrell pricked Jaime with her thorns one more time before dying, but she wasn’t wrong. He had come to regret helping Cersei shore up her power. And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? He’d more than done his part. And if Cersei needs to pay, so does he.

“Tyrion wants me to convince her to ring the bells to surrender.”

Davos chuckles. “She’ll never do that, will she?”

Jaime looks up at the fortifications, the curtain wall bristling with scorpions as far as he can see around the walls. “No, she won’t.”

“Will you?” Davos asks. “Might get you enough time to reach the boat, and stop the queen from sacking the city.”

Jaime shrugs helplessly. “Cersei won’t want to flee either.”

Davos runs a hand over his beard. He looks as if he regrets helping Tyrion with this treasonous errand. “If you reach the boat, bear south once you get past the Hook. You’ll never make it to Essos, but you might reach Tarth.”

Jaime grimaces. That would be unspeakably cruel to Brienne. He’s already hurt her enough. “Thank you.”

Davos claps him on the shoulder. “Don’t thank me. Ring the damn bells. I’ve traipsed all over Westeros and sailed to Essos. I have no desire to die back in Flea Bottom.”

_How’d you like to go? In the arms of the woman I love._ Isn’t that why he’s here? Jaime doesn’t fool himself. Death is the most likely outcome. The Stranger, at least, is preferable to the Night’s King.

“I’ll do what I can. You have my word.” Jaime gives the smuggler one last quick nod and pulls up his hood. He strides quickly away from the shelter of the trees to join the tide of smallfolk moving through the gate.


	2. Chapter 2

_Now, I'll always be right where you are_   
_No borders can keep us apart_   
_And on the other side, I'll meet you there_

  
The city stinks of fear. Jaime remembers that scent well. Rank sweat, animal shit, and piss. He can taste it on the air. With the Red Keep’s gates closed, the smallfolk have good reason to fear. So does he.

He hears the battle begin long before he has any idea who’s winning. Loud booms from the Blackwater, the calls of soldiers on the walls readying their weapons, and the shrieks of Drogon, the last and largest of Daenerys’s dragons.

A shadow passes overhead, and moments later a massive explosion rocks the street. A small girl dashing through the alley beside him screams, and her mother sweeps her away from Jaime.

He turns a corner and sees the fireball blooming above the King’s Gate. He’s running out of time. Snow’s soldiers will be pouring into the city now.

There’s a staircase cut into the cliff wall. Not his first choice by a long shot, but he can get down to the cave from there, and then up into the keep. Assuming the hidden door cut into the city wall is still unlocked. Assuming he still remembers how to get through this warren of a city.

The streets and alleys all look the same crowded with people, waves of humanity crashing against each other in every square, all of them looking for somewhere safe, somewhere to hide, somewhere to run.

All this for one damned uncomfortable chair. He sat in it, with Aerys’s blood still dripping from his sword. He hated every moment. But, oh, the legend of it, the power. Cersei drank it down like sweet Dornish wine.

Fire lights the sky, and Jaime stops, with everyone else, to watch the dragon circling the city. Drogon is burning the scorpions on the walls. He’s seen Drogon attacking. This is something else. This is vengeance given wings. Men are thrown from the walls, burning as they fall back to earth. There’s no time for the soldiers to pick up bows, no time for spears or even time to run. Drogon cuts through them, Daenerys a tiny dot of silver hair flying along his back.

The shock fades as the dragon flies out of view, and chaos truly erupts around him. Panic infects the crowd, wailing children and angry voices, men shoving down anyone in their way.

Jaime grabs a sword, and keeps moving. He’s lost track of where he is in the city until he sees a bell tower rising from the next street. The bell won’t ring. Cersei will never surrender.

Wings flap overhead, and nearby Jaime sees Drogon alight on the roof of a building.  

He’s faced this dragon, charged it like a great golden fool and nearly cooked in his armor for his trouble. And he’s thanked the gods when it blew wights apart like charred parchment. But seeing it perched above the cowering smallfolk, Daenerys looking down on them, Jaime is horribly aware of just how vast the creature is. How deadly.

Yet the dragon isn’t the one that frightens him now. The dragon is as calm as Jaime has ever seen it. Daenerys is the one blazing.

He’s out of time.

The people around him are staring up at the bell tower. All around him, they’re calling for the bells. They don’t want to die. No one here fucking wants to die today. Not even Jaime.

He bolts down an alley, around a corner, and finds the door just where he expected. There isn’t even a sentry in the tower. He sprints up the stairs, his lungs burning, as the cries of the crowd outside grow more frantic.

It feels like forever before he reaches the top, his heart pounding as he grabs the rope, yanking it with all his strength.

Jaime feels the first peal more than he hears it, but he pulls the rope again and again. When he lets go, he hears other bells ringing across the city. The Lannister soldiers will lay down their arms. The smallfolk will clear the streets. And while Jon Snow and the Northern troops move through the city, Jaime can make it to the Keep. He’s done what Tyrion asked. Now he must get his sister away safely, or face judgment with her.

And then the dragon roars, and Jaime’s worst nightmare takes flight.

 


	3. Chapter 3

_So bury me and lock me in_  
_I'll find a way to rise again_  
_I'll break away to find you where you are_

  
Bloody Targaryens, and their bloody enormous castle. Jaime knows all the shortcuts, all the ways in and out of the Keep, but his side stings, every breath feels like there’s sand in his lungs, and there are so many damned stairs.

First the stairs to the bloody beach, and then Euron waiting at the bottom. Fucking Euron. As if Jaime gives a damn that Euron got into Cersei’s bed. That surprised him, his sudden clarity. But Euron was wasting precious time. Jaime could feel the noose tightening. The dragon roaring above, bits of the castle crashing into the bay, drove that point home. The Red Keep was falling.  

So they fought. Bronn would be proud. _You want to fight pretty, or you want to win?_ He supposes he won, though for how long, Jaime wouldn’t want to bet. Blood is soaking into his tunic, into his breeches.

By the way the castle is shaking as he makes his way up out of the caves, Daenerys wasn’t content to just destroy the city. But the chaos is all outside. Inside the keep, a calm settles over him. He made it. Too late to save the city, and Tyrion’s dream of sending Jaime and Cersei to Pentos isn’t going to happen, because Jaime’s almost certain he’s going to bleed to death before he sees daylight again. Besides, that little boat won’t make it out of the bay. Not with Jaime trying to row it with one hand. He’d laugh if he had any breath left to do it.

Jaime gets glimpses of servants, soldiers, all of them running away. Not one person seems to care that a bloody man with a gold hand is staggering through the keep. He’s not even sure where he’s going until he gets there, the courtyard beside Tywin’s solar, with the map of the seven kingdoms painted on the floor.

And there she is. Cersei, wearing an elaborate crimson and gold gown spattered with dirt. She’s alone, that sycophant Qyburn fled, the Mountain missing from her side. Perhaps the Hound got his wish for revenge. Or perhaps a ton of stone finally did what Oberyn Martell’s poison could not.

Cersei’s eyes shine with tears. When they were young, when they would hide from Tywin’s wrath, she looked just like this, small and scared. Father hated everything they did, everything they were, on those rare occasions when he returned to the Rock. Cersei was too loud, too bossy. Jaime wasn’t smart enough. That they were seven at the time didn’t signify. They only had each other. No one else understood, not even their mother.

When she turns and sees Jaime, barely standing but here at last, he expects her to snarl and rage at him.

Her relief, the way she runs to him, makes Jaime’s heart clench painfully. She sent a man to kill him, and he doubts she even remembers it right now. All his life, he did what he could to make her happy. Until he couldn’t anymore, until her fears swallowed up her love for him and he had to leave, had to choose the realm over her. Had to walk his own path, just once, if not for as long as he wanted to. He still loves her. But he no longer aches to kiss her. If this is the end, his last kiss will be Brienne’s. He takes some comfort in that.

The pain is ebbing, even as Cersei touches him and her hands come away bloody. If he is dying, there’s nothing to be done. And if Tyrion betrayed the dragon queen for this, Jaime will see it through even if he has to crawl to that boat.

So he takes her hand, and he leads her back down into the tunnels, where the ghosts of dragons still lurk in the darkness.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now departing canon. We're gone past the end of 8.05 and off into AU.

_From the grave I'll crawl_   
_Through the pouring rain_   
_For you, I would pay the cost_   
_To be in your arms again_

  
“The boat is still here. They didn’t escape.” Waves lap insistently at his boat as Davos ties it to a chunk of statuary fallen from the castle high above.

“That should make the dragon queen happy,” Arya replies, without the relish he expected to hear at the confirmation of Queen Cersei’s likely death.

“It won’t make Lord Tyrion happy,” Davos counters. He finds it doesn’t please him either. He hoped Tyrion’s brother would come to his senses before it was too late.

“He got what he wanted. It’s a bit late to complain about the cost.” Arya leaps from the boat and lands with a splash right on the edge of the shallow, rocky beach. She takes a few steps into the sand and stops suddenly. “I found Greyjoy.”

Davos follows her out of the boat, not so spry, and finds the reaver lying on a rock, a grin on his face and a deep stab wound in his gut. A seagull is busily picking out his eyes. “Looks like our one-handed friend made it this far.”

Arya makes a sour face. “Jaime Lannister is not my friend. I almost killed him once.”

“Why didn’t you?” Davos picks his way carefully among the rocks until he can see the tunnel entrance. Bricks and massive chunks of dragon skull choke the opening.

A gleam catches his eye in a heap of bricks. Davos makes his way over the uneven ground to the spot, and bends to pick through the debris. Lannister’s gold hand pokes from the rubble. “I found him.”

Arya comes over and they start pulling away bricks and bone. Lannister’s jacket is covered in blood, a nasty wound in his cheek smearing his face with dried blood. “I was at the Twins. He looked like just sitting at the same table with Walder Frey made him sick. He put the old man in his place, so I let him live,” she says, tossing bricks behind her with a clatter. “Killed the rest of them, though. They shit themselves in the end.”

Davos is beginning to wonder if he made a wise choice, running this furtive errand with Arya Stark instead of staying with the dragon queen. The queen frightens him less than this girl and her confessions.

Arya reaches down to pull Lannister’s body from the rubble. She’s a strong little thing, but not that strong. He grabs hold of the golden hand and tugs. The hand pops free.

Arya frowns at him. “Maybe we just bring back the heads.”

“I’m not cutting off any heads,” Davos protests. He’s done some unpleasant tasks in his long smuggling career, including hiding a man in a wagonload of manure, but he draws the line at hacking apart corpses. He’s seen enough corpses to last a lifetime.

She pulls a wicked little knife from its sheath. “I can do it.” And she grabs Lannister’s hair, hauling his head up out of the debris.

Lannister coughs. Arya startles and his head hits the bricks. He cries out, eyes flickering open.

“Gods be good,” Davos breathes.

Lannister’s gaze is unfocused, and he blinks several times until his gaze lands on Arya. “Am I dead?” he asks, his voice slightly slurred.

“Not yet.” Arya huffs and opens his jacket, looking for wounds. She starts to turn him over and Lannister groans in pain. She presses a hand against his side, probes the blood-soaked mess of his tunic, makes a face. She looks up at Davos. “He’s been stabbed a few times. Needs stitched up.”

“Cersei,” Lannister whispers.

Arya closes his jacket, wipes his blood on his breeches. “Idiot,” she mutters.

“I’ll get him to the boat. You look for the queen,” Davos directs. He manages to get his hands under the knight’s armpits and drags him away from the entrance. Lannister passes out almost immediately. The lack of a blood trail as he drags the man makes Davos think Lannister might not die if a maester gets to him soon enough.

He can’t quite wrestle the man into the boat by himself. Davos turns and sees Arya crouching in the rubble, moving debris away from a spot closer to the cave entrance. “Did you find something?”

Arya glances back at him. “Cersei.”

“Alive?” The dragon queen won’t care if her rival is grievously wounded or even dying. She will want to execute the woman herself regardless. Perhaps it will finally quench the bloodlust that has gripped her since Missandei’s death.

Arya turns back toward the queen without answering, and a shiver of apprehension runs down Davos’s spine. “My lady?”

Arya keeps silent. Leaving Jaime Lannister lying on the beach, Davos moves through the rocks as quickly as he can.

He sees the queen, her hair caked with blood, her right arm bent at an impossible angle. Her crimson gown is dark and wet with blood across her belly, a massive dragon’s tooth poking up through her body.

Arya Stark has one hand around the queen’s throat, and the other over her mouth and nose.

“What are you doing?” He can’t keep the horror out of his voice.

Arya doesn’t let go even as Cersei Lannister begins to twitch, her head thrashing from side to side. “Showing her more mercy than she deserves.”

Davos doesn’t look away. Someone should witness the end of the Lannister reign.

Finally the body stops twitching, and her chest falls and does not move again. Arya waits a few more seconds and pulls away. She stays there, crouched before the body. “She was the last name on my list,” she says, relief and confusion in her voice.

“Your list?”

“The people I wanted to die. They’re all dead.” She says it without the satisfaction Davos expects.

“And you’re not,” he reminds her. There’s still something warm in her, despite the ice she shows the world.

“Not today,” she agrees. She sighs and crouches over the body, picking through the bricks until she finds Cersei’s small silver crown, splashed with blood. She looks back at Davos. “What do we do with the other one?”

It would be easiest to give Jaime Lannister the same mercy his sister received. Daenerys will kill him. Gruesomely. Publicly. But Tyrion risked everything to get his brother and sister to safety.

A plan forms in his head. He’s smuggled more dangerous cargo, and he’s always liked a challenge. “How do you feel about committing a bit of treason?”

A slow smile spreads across Arya’s face. “Tell me the plan.”


	5. Chapter 5

_The fire I would walk through_   
_For all the pain I caused you_   
_Oh, I would pay the cost_   
_To be in your arms again_

 

Brienne arrives at Evenfall on the evening tide, soaked to the skin, her belly empty and her mouth sour after a long, storm-tossed passage across the Straits of Tarth. Her father, grown so much thinner and greyer than she remembers, takes one look at her drawn face and haunted eyes, and sends her to bed.

She washes away the ashes of King’s Landing first. A grey scum covers the surface of the water. Even the air tasted of death when she and Lady Sansa arrived with Lord Bran days after the city fell. Thousands of lives bought with Jaime’s honor wiped out in a single day.

The politics of the war’s end no longer interested her as long as Lady Sansa was safe. Brienne only half-listened to the maneuvering, the plotting and scheming to fill the bloody throne. She agreed when asked if Tarth could take on some refugees from the city: tradesmen, orphaned children, and injured smallfolk in need of additional care. Tarth has a monastery where a sect of healing brothers live, much like the Quiet Isle.

That ship arrived days ago. She hoped her raven reached her father before the ship did. But Brienne had unfinished business in the capital, knighting Podrick, saying her goodbyes to the Starks, taking a few private moments to say goodbye to Jaime.

Much of the city was lost. The White Sword Tower where Jaime had given her Oathkeeper had fallen. The courtyard where Cersei had spoken plainly and brutally of Brienne’s love for Jaime was filled with broken stone. The streets Brienne had wandered during her time in the capital were still choked with debris. Wildfire still burned in some sections of the city. Rebuilding, if it happened, was a long way off.

But the courtyard overlooking the castle’s gardens and the Blackwater survived unscathed, and that was where Brienne let him go. She knew it had been foolish to hold out any hope for Jaime’s survival. He made his choice, and he died with Cersei as Brienne had known he would when he rode out from Winterfell. She knew from the start that their time was short, and she savored every moment. Nothing that sweet could last.

Brienne startles when she starts to slip beneath the grimy water. She hasn’t slept much since leaving Winterfell. She hasn’t slept much since Jaime left her. The bed still smelled like him for days afterward. Even in sleep she could not rest.

She can’t indulge in grief. She needs to be strong for her father, for the people entrusted to their care. Brienne rises from the bath, clenching her teeth and willing away the wave of dizziness that hits her, and dries and dresses quickly. Her bed is too short, but it is clean and warm and she never shared it with anyone.

Jaime dies that night, trapped in the dark, slowly, choking on stone dust and the smoke of a fallen city, hearing the screams of the people he couldn’t save. At the end, he calls out for Cersei.

Brienne wakes gasping, tears drying on her cheeks. The morning is grey, the sun veiled by the smoke still drifting south from King’s Landing. She ignores her armor and the small satchel of belongings she brought south from Winterfell. Grey, black, the Stark colors. She wants to wear black, wants to openly mourn, but that would invite questions she does not want to answer. She opens her wardrobe and picks through her old clothes, still in good shape though dusty. Eventually she selects a pair of sturdy navy trousers and an azure tunic.

There are dresses in her wardrobe, but she hasn’t worn one in at least a decade. If her father thinks her years away have softened her stance on gowns and marriage and leaving swordplay to men, he will be disappointed. She is an anointed knight, and she means to insist every man who belittled her use the correct title in addressing her.

That first day, Brienne walks down to the town below the castle. The familiar path under her boots, the waving grass stretching down to the cliffs and the pure blue of the water distract her from the haze of smoke in the sky. She feels off balance without Oathkeeper hanging from her hip. Her left hand reaches for its hilt far more often than she ever noticed when it was there.

The main street of Evenfall is largely unchanged, but new buildings have sprouted up here and there. The bakery that used to give her meat pies has a new name, and there’s a new smith in the forge. The smallfolk who remember her are polite, but others are wary. Tarth has always been apart from the politics and problems of the rest of the seven kingdoms. Hearing tales from the refugees of King’s Landing has upset many of them. Brienne makes an effort to soothe their fears, but she cannot offer guarantees. If she has learned one thing in her years away, it’s that nothing is certain.  She returns to the castle weary beyond all measure.

Dinner is difficult. Lord Selwyn asks a lot of questions, about Renly, about how she ended up in Lady Catelyn’s service. What happened after he sent Roose Bolton the ransom response. Why she wields a Lannister sword. She pleads exhaustion before explaining Oathkeeper, and falls into bed before the sun has fully set.

Deep in the night, Jaime comes to her bed. He is tender and fierce by turns, and loving him feels as natural as breathing. Brienne cannot imagine never having this with him, the intimacy not just of their bodies, but lying together in the firelight afterward, talking and laughing and kissing again before curling up together to sleep.

Brienne grieves again come morning. She knows his leaving wasn’t a simple matter of choice between her and Cersei. The guilt he carried for his actions and hers always weighed on him. Brienne knew that. Her eyes are still swollen and red when she comes down to break her fast with her father.

“Why don’t we visit the orphans today? I’m due a report from the septas caring for them,” Lord Selwyn suggests, concern in his eyes.

She shovels eggs into her mouth without tasting a single bite. “Of course.”

Where she goes doesn’t matter as long as she keeps moving. When she’s idle, the weight of all that has happened settles on her. Brienne was supposed to be living in the White Sword Tower, one of Renly’s anointed seven. The realm was supposed to be prospering in his wise reign, not suffering winter and starvation and an appalling number of Houses wiped out entirely.

“Brienne, what can I do?” Lord Selwyn asks quietly.

She looks up and sees him studying her face. The lines around his eyes and mouth are deeper, his shoulders more stooped, his face ruddier. He’s been drinking too much. His hair is completely white now, and his signet ring is loose on his finger. Sooner than she would like, Brienne will be the Lady of Tarth, with all the responsibilities that entails. Running away to the Kingsguard is no longer an option.

“Nothing, Father.” He can’t change the things she’s seen, the things she’s done.

He doesn’t push, though she can tell he wants to. They finish breakfast in silence, and he spends the entire walk to the orphanage in the hills telling funny stories from around the island. Brienne chuckles when it’s expected, but does not offer any stories of her own. Her father would not appreciate tales of the wildling who tried to court her with a story about nursing from a giantess, or about sparring with Lady Arya. He indulged her love of swordplay but never truly approved of it. She still hasn’t told him that she is a knight. She hasn’t spoken Jaime’s name.

The children are a wonder. Thirty of them came in from King’s Landing, from babes in arms up to about five years old. They have nothing and no one, some were found cowering beside their dead parents and others hidden in their homes, but they are so carefree that Brienne finds herself smiling for the first time in weeks.

One little boy trips over another child and hits the floor heavily. He comes up with scraped palms and a wobbling chin. Brienne has spent almost no time around young children, but even she knows a howl is coming. Outrage or pain, it doesn’t really matter. The boy follows through, and one of the septas starts to rush to him before she remembers the tiny babe in her arms.

“My lady, if you could…”

It takes Brienne a moment to understand that the septa is trying to hand her the infant. “Oh, I don’t—”

The septa doesn’t wait for her to finish, just shoves the tiny, squirming bundle into her arms.

Brienne clutches it like she might drop it at any moment, which outrages the little creature. Indignant squawks rise from the babe, and Brienne rises to her feet, bouncing the child in her arms a little as she’s seen nursemaids do when they had visitors in the castle. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles to the child.

Poor little thing. Brienne can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl, but it has fair skin, a bruise still fading from one pudgy cheek. Bright blue eyes peer up at her, fists waving.

She keeps bouncing lightly while the babe calms. And she’s fine, until the babe smiles at her. During the journey to King’s Landing and a handful of days more, Brienne thought she would have those smiles, a blue-eyed child to show all the secrets of Tarth. Jaime’s child. But just as she was becoming accustomed to the idea, she started to bleed, and another dream died.

The child knows nothing of her pain, but seems to sense her distress. It fusses and starts to cry, and nothing Brienne does consoles it. The septa comes bustling back and takes the babe. “Thank you, my lady. I’ll get this little mite changed and fed. All will be right in his world.”

Brienne nods numbly, but she excuses herself and hurries back to the castle. She finds a bottle of Dornish wine and can’t help herself. She sits in front of the fire in her room and drinks until a maid fetches her for dinner.

Her father scowls at her condition. “Brienne, this is not acceptable behavior.”

She scowls back. “I am not a child, Father. I will be fine by tomorrow.”

He stabs a small potato and shoves it into his mouth. “You had better be. I need to speak with traders from Pentos. You will go visit the injured from the capital.”

Brienne nods. She doesn’t want to see any more injuries than she’s already seen. She carried a man halfway to a pyre at Winterfell before she realized he wasn’t dead.

She drinks the rest of the bottle, staring at the fire and wishing she hadn’t released Podrick. He understood. Not all of it, but enough.

She is back in the bear pit, but this time, Steelshanks Walton’s arrows miss. The bear rakes Jaime’s belly with its claws, and his guts fall to the dirt. He drops to his knees, and the bear slashes his face. He’s already dead, but she can’t check, because the bear is chasing her. This time it catches her trying to climb out of the pit, and drags her back down with its teeth.

She’s at Joffrey’s wedding, and Cersei accuses Lady Sansa of murder in front of everyone. She orders Jaime to kill Sansa, and he drags her out of her chair and slides his sword through her back in front of Joffrey’s corpse.

Brienne wakes shaking and drenched in sweat. The sun has not risen, but she gets up anyway. She writes to Lady Sansa, sharing pleasant stories and hope that Winterfell fares well without her. As soon as the sky turns from purple to pink, she dresses, dons her armor, and straps Oathkeeper’s belt around her waist.

She spends hours in the training yard, swinging at a practice dummy, and then sparring with anyone who challenges her. When she beats all but the last challenger easily (he takes a bit of work to keep going until he makes a mistake), the master-at-arms asks about her training. He is the first person she tells that she is a knight. She can tell he doesn’t quite believe her, and she leaves out who knighted her.

The sword draws eyes and whispered comments. Few of these men have ever seen Valyrian steel before. Only those who served with Lord Randyll Tarly during the skirmishes between Renly and Stannis.

“It was given to me to find and protect the Stark daughters,” she tells the hedge knight brave enough to ask her directly. When he looks skeptical, Brienne adds, “We are not all black and white, Ser Durran. Liberators become destroyers, killers turn protector.”

Kingsguard kill kings. She and Jaime had that in common, though she killed another king, not her own. Still.

Brienne retires to her room, belly hollow though the thought of food makes her ill. She forces down bread and cheese, scrubs away the sweat and dust of the training yard. None of those men was willing to make their lord’s heir bleed, so bruises are the worst of her injuries.

She eyes her armor, considers it. No, the last thing the injured need to see is an armored knight. At least some of these people were hurt by the invading forces. Others by the dragon queen. None will trust a woman who fought alongside either of them. But today she can’t bring herself to pretend. If there is anything these people will understand, it is mourning.

She dons all black, and sets off through the forest on horseback. Her father asked her to take one of the men-at-arms with her, but she ignores that. She has a dirk tucked into her boot if needed.

The brothers live in a small village on the northwest coast, about an hour’s ride from Evenfall. Brienne has been there once or twice, but so long ago now that the memory is faded. She relishes the ride, taking her time. The towering forests of Tarth smell clean and sharp, pine trees and earth. Squirrels and foxes dart across the path. Birdsong echoes through the trees. The tightness in her chest eases some.

The Elder Brother sees her immediately as she passes through their open gate. She is pleased to see that they have defenses. Reavers don’t often trouble Tarth, they’ve learned that Tarth fights back, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.

He speaks softly, as many of the brothers have taken a vow of silence. They walk through the women’s cabins first. A septa has dressed their wounds, and listens to their stories. Most of the women are recovering well. There are two the Elder Brother fears won’t make it. A woman lost both legs when she took refuge under her own bed. Another is so badly burned that infection is almost certain, no matter what measures they take to help her.

Those faces stick with her. She still can’t reconcile the dragon queen’s callous and wanton destruction with the quiet, steely woman she met at Winterfell. That woman showed Jaime mercy, but had none for her own subjects.

“You may not visit the men’s burn cabin,” the Elder Brother tells her. “Many of the men wear only a strip of cloth over their privy parts. It’s not appropriate for an unmarried lady.”

Brienne almost laughs. If he only knew the things she’d seen at Winterfell. “The battlefield is not an appropriate place, and yet I have seen that. Burned skin will not trouble me.”

The Elder Brother regards her with surprise. “I did not realize you’d fought a true battle, my lady.”

“I was lucky to survive. Many others did not. I had good men around me.” She thinks wistfully of young Lady Lyanna Mormont, the bravest child she ever met. “Good women too.”

He looks at her again, knowledge changing his perception. “You mourn,” he says with conviction.

She nods, swallowing hard. “For so many.”

He pats her arm. “Perhaps you can help these men, then.” He leads her to a small cabin, and hesitates at the door. “Their bodies recover. Their minds do not. It would do them good to speak with someone who understands battle. I myself have never held a sword, never stood side by side with men who died before my eyes. It is a hard thing to accept.”

Impossible to be surrounded by so much death and not be damaged. The feast they held at Winterfell was a wild celebration of life, and at the time she thought it frivolous, but it was desperately needed. King’s Landing had no celebration, only fear and death and chaos and escape for a blessed few.

The Elder Brother opens the door with a key.

“You lock them in?”

He smiles apologetically. “For their safety. We have had men who simply walk out into the woods to die.”

Even as she is now, Brienne cannot imagine such despair, but her mind immediately supplies an alternative. She could walk out into the water. Cold blue certainty, an end to nightmares. An end to loss. The thought is chillingly seductive.

Brienne must duck her head to get into the cabin. It contains six beds, each filled with a man. Some are seated, reading by candlelight. One is eating a plate of meat and boiled potatoes. The last is curled on his side, shirtless. His exposed back and flank are wrapped with bandages. Fading bruises cover his arm. He is muttering softly to himself, his face hidden by tangled hair.

“What happened to that one?” she asks, pointing.

The Elder Brother sighs. “Building collapse. He may have been attacked by soldiers first. There was a sword wound in his back. He was recovering until I told him about the city.”

“He didn’t know?” She was lucky. She arrived in King’s Landing knowing the city was largely destroyed, the Red Keep in ruins.

“No, he must have been hurt early on, before the dragon began its attack. He was likely a beggar or a thief, with nowhere to run.” He gestures toward the man. “Perhaps you might sit with him?”

Brienne nods, though she is wary. Men whose spirits have been broken can be dangerous. She crosses the dim room and moves to sit on a stool beside the man’s bed.

He doesn’t move, the vulnerable curve of his back moving slowly with his breaths. His hair is a shade too long, but the muscles of his shoulders and arm look strong. He was well-fed before the battle.

“The bells,” he mutters, guttural. “The bells.” His hand clenches against his bare chest.

Someone rang the bells. Someone surrendered the city, and the people thought it was over. She has heard that much. And then the real nightmare began. Daenerys from the sky, the allied soldiers from below, slaughter and rape and fire everywhere.

She reaches out to touch the man’s shoulder.

He stiffens. “Go away,” he whispers, pleading.

“I saw it,” she says soothingly. “It must have been terrifying.”

“The bells,” he says again. “The bells. The bells. The bells.” His voice goes higher with each repeat. And with each repeat, his voice grows more familiar.

A knot forms in Brienne’s chest. Cold spreads through her, all except her hand, skin and his burning skin. Impossible. And yet. She tugs gently on the man’s shoulder, and he falls to his back.

“Oh,” is all she manages before a wrenching sob tears from her throat.

Jaime Lannister looks up, not at her, past her. His beautiful, intelligent, perceptive eyes are vacant, his bearded face heavily bruised.

She wants to scream at the unfairness of this. And she remembers now, his whisper, telling her to go away inside, to let Locke’s men have her body but not her soul. How many times has Jaime retreated inside himself? How long has he been lost this time?

“My lady?” The Elder Brother is at her back, a soothing hand on her shoulder. “Perhaps it’s best you leave.”

She shakes her head, shrugs off his hand, reaches out to take Jaime’s hand in hers. Now she understands why the Elder Brother thought he was a thief. In Essos, the magistrates take a hand for stealing. “Did he say anything? Before you told him about the city?”

“He said he rang the bells. Does that mean anything to you?”

Tears escape her eyes, and Brienne brushes them away. “He surrendered the city. To save it. And then she burned it anyway.”

“We cannot save everyone,” he says mildly. “But perhaps his distress is more understandable now.”

He has no idea, and she won’t tell him. Knowing who Jaime is would be dangerous for everyone. Brienne turns to the Elder Brother. “Pack anything he had with him when he arrived. I’ll be taking him back to Evenfall.”

His eyebrows go up. “My lady? Why?”

“I knew him,” she says simply. “At Winterfell. I owe him this much.” Whether Jaime will thank her for it, or simply jump off a parapet, she isn’t sure.

What her father will say about this is easier to understand, and she is correct. He is horrified that his daughter has ridden back from the brothers with an injured man slumped against her back, and angry that she intends him to stay in the castle. Brienne does not argue with Lord Selwyn. She simply does what she needs to, helping Jaime off the horse, up into the castle and to her old nursery. She moves her own things to her old septa’s adjacent room. And she locks the doors from the inside.

Food and water are brought. The maester attends to Jaime’s wounds. He was lucky, he says. Brienne isn’t so sure. She talks to Jaime for hours, telling him about all that happened, after the battle ended. Her voice grows hoarse, and still he remains lying on the bed, mute when he isn’t muttering.

That night, when the darkness has settled in, she falls asleep in a chair by the fire.

Jaime is at her door, talking too fast, nervous and ill at ease, a flagon of wine and two cups balanced in his arms. He makes her drink, and all at once she realizes that he did intend to follow her out of the great hall. He is jealous of Tormund Giantsbane, and if she wants him, perhaps she can have him, if only for one night. His lips descend hungrily on hers, his hand in her hair.

And she startles awake to find Jaime standing beside her, staring into the fire.

“Jaime?” This isn’t the first time she’s tried to rouse him with his name. Softly in his ear, firmly to his face, sobbed against his throat. Nothing has worked.

He doesn’t answer this time either, but he allows her to lead him back to bed docilely enough. And because she is exhausted and no longer cares what anyone thinks of her, Brienne gets into bed beside him, curls her body around his gently, taking pains to avoid his healing wounds. Who stabbed him, she doesn’t know, only that he barely escaped death then, only to have a building fall on him. The Red Keep, she assumes.

How did he end up here? Does anyone else know he lives? She can’t be sure, and asking will take some delicacy.

But for now, she will hold him, perhaps for the last time. She never stopped loving him, through the pain and the grief. She will always love him.

When she wakes in the morning, she is still wrapped around Jaime’s body. The sun filters through dusty old curtains, and the fire has nearly gone out. She moves slowly, trying to get out of bed without waking him. His body needs rest to heal.

She is nearly free of him when a hand grips her wrist.

Brienne’s heart beats fast, a hummingbird in her chest. “Jaime?”

Slowly, he turns over. His eyes are still distant, but he looks _at_ her. “Brienne?” His voice is cracked and brittle, but wondering.

She nods. “I thought you died,” she admits, voice trembling.

“So did I,” he answers. He looks around, gingerly. She supposes he must have a head injury, though she can’t see one. “Where am I?”

“Evenfall Hall, Tarth.”

His eyes widen. “You took me home? After what I did?”

“Someone sent you to me,” she corrects. “But I found you.”

Jaime tugs on her wrist. “Come here.”

Reluctantly, Brienne settles back on the bed, close beside him.

“I should have told you,” he says haltingly. “I love you. I didn’t leave because I didn’t. I never stopped thinking about you, even … at the end.”

“I love you, too,” she answers, easily. They should have said all this sooner, but she thanks the gods that she can say it now.

“Will you tell me, again, what happened? I don’t even remember who sits the throne.”

“I can do that. And then you can decide what’s next,” she promises.

Jaime looks at her with naked hope in his eyes. “I’d like to stay. If you’ll have me?”

“Stay,” Brienne answers, and takes his hand in hers. “Stay with me.”


End file.
